


Aphelion

by Crocuta



Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, And there's space, M/M, THOMMY IN SPACE, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-26 14:44:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1692116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crocuta/pseuds/Crocuta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Thomas is a former-military pilot and Jimmy is exactly the kind of droid he's looking for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Lammergeierquills, even though she has no idea who Thomas and Jimmy even are - she lets me cry anyway.

It was probably fucking America Thomas's boots were standing on. The sad, sandy, crumbling mess of America that just brought this on itself thank-you-very-much. Thomas pressed the mask tighter onto his face breathing more of that life giving air that the pinetree seedling trapped in UV titanium was producing at an accelerated rate. 

Fucking America. The only spot on the whole smoldering floating boulder where even the air would kill you, if the overpopulated and inbred wildthings didn't find you and tear you limb from limb first. Thomas nudged a scrap of metal with the toe of his boot making the sand scatter. 

"According to our last coordinates above I believe we are in the vicinity of Mississippi's metropolis," a light, professional tone drifted over the aeronaught's shoulders. 

Jimmy was holding up a large sheet of metal, squinting at it slowly and tossed it aside.  
The unit freaked Thomas out a bit, if he was being totally and completely honest. There was a lot that the (Former military) aeronaught saw that could turn slicked back hair white. Artillery fire, holding the man he loved while he died, and turning on his one country somehow didn't turn close to watching Jimmy maneuver himself. 

HUMAN CEREBRAL INTERFACE SYSTEMS or more commonly known as units where a byproduct of the war. The arms race between the countries America turned on was typical, but like a nervous cat America began devouring its own. Between the sweeping hunger and warfare claiming lives people going missing wasn't exactly something that someone batted an eye at during the war. 

America wanted better machines, better ships, stronger artillery and their solution was units. Humans who were lying sick or wounded were forcibly ripped from their bodies. Their thought processes more primitive than there coding was dumped as easily as data into their new vessels. Bodies capable of syncing with a ship to fly it with more ease than the most experienced pilot, bodies that could sustain heavy damage and not fall in battle, bodies that survived the massive radiation on the planet. 

 

Bodies like the one Jimmy now possessed, he certainly didn't need a plant housing unit strapped to his back to be able to breathe. If Thomas wasn't ex-military and knew how to pinpoint a unit, he would have had no idea. The unit that housed Jimmy was a later model. It didn't have the ugly excuses for skin and sinew - this was the handy work of some of the more brilliant military minds at work. 

The skin and faux organs were alive and farmgrown infused with bits of top-tier metals. His bones in the dead quiet could be heard grinding under his skin as all metal does. The muscle and tissue alive and responsive thanks to the neural pathways carved into machinery. He was an expensive piece of work to keep in prime condition, and working under Thomas was about the best he could do for now. Jimmy picked up a large sheet of metal, scanned it, deemed it shit and crumbled it. Like it was nothing more than a ricecracker in a bodybuilder's fingers.

 

All in all they didn't salvage much for selling. America had that dreadful tendency to not keep up their infrastructure since the 1950s so most of it was easily blown to smithereens. There isn't much you could do with it. Maybe - MAYBE this could be enough do some repairs. Jimmy didn't provide any soothing words - wasn't his job after all. After hours during his recharge, the most Thomas got out of him was a pointed look of Fuck Off.

Thomas hammered some of what he salvaged onto the weaker spots of his ship. Old hinges were replaced with ones bent into the right shapes by Jimmy. The ship had once been a Lady Liberty, a smaller ship to run people between the larger bomb and gun toting crafts that reduced towns to ash. There wasn't anything left factory on the ship except the frame. The wounds were staunched with scrap metal and reinforced with scales of license plates scavenged from the earth's surface. 

It was an old, tired looking ship. So far from the glittering white symbol of fauxliberty, but it was Thomas's, and there was a bit a pride attached to that thought. 

"I believe we scavenged - " Came Jimmy creeping into his train of thought. 

"A fuck ton of metal," Was Thomas's grunt from around his mask. 

A first Thomas thought Jimmy was going into some kind of fit. He watched the skin around faux-eyes crinkle the mouth twist strangely, the nostrils flare. It wasn't until he heard a sound the unit hadn't made before to know what was going on. The little fucker was laughing. Well, trying to laugh was more like it - but pinging terribly. 

Pings were lags caused by new neural pathways being formed. Clearly, Jimmy hadn't laughed in a while. Fuck, Thomas can't remember the last time he seen someone laugh.

"I'll say." 

 

The inside of the ship was hotter than the miasma left of the sun. Jimmy was already on it, with a few brushes of his mind against the ships interface kicked the engine to life and cycled the stale air out. Thomas breathed a grateful lungful of cool air unburdened the mask around his face. Deep groves were left around his nose and mouth, and he couldn't even begin to care when there was cool air blowing on him and whiskey 

Confident the ship was in good hands, or what passed as hands, Thomas set off to his storage closet sized room. The only sleeping quarter in the place - if you could call a hammock hanging over the hole in the ground that passed as a toilet a bed. The Armsrace during the war wasn't a time about thinking about someone's comfort, so - storage and bed were shacked up into one. He ran his hand under the tap for a few precious drops of water to wet his face and peer into the pocket sized mirror mounted on the wall. 

God did he look tired. His cheeks were hollowed more than usual and were accompanied by blue circles under his eyes. Thomas turned his face this way and that, and in the dim light he couldn't see the scar dipping into his lip - hell he could even pretend he was handsome. If Thomas didn't carry his dinner in all the wrong places. 

His bed and government issued blanket swaddled him and he swallowed a fifth of whiskey with the excuse that it was safer than the water left in the ships tanks. Maybe, maybe if he was lucky the extra strong shit would knock out any nightmares before they happened.

 

He was wrong.

It didn't start out like any of the usual war nightmares. He was home. The bed was wide and soft, the sheets clean and white, and the press of a Labrador pressed against his spin. The smell of real honest to god eggs wafted on the air. Thomas's gray eyes flew open. It was some kind of fucked up dream. Just a dream of war and bullshit and government, and here he was home. Home again. 

The dog wagged her tail with a sleepy thud when she felt Thomas move from the bed. He could hear pots and pans clanking in his kitchen - Ed! 

Before he could make his way to the doorway he was rooted to the spot by the sound of the pans clanking entirely too loud. If he could turn his head he would see the dog bristling along with her growling. He wish he could do anything, move, but his body was frozen and his eyes were plastered open seeing his home disappear around him and Edward dying in his arms all over again.

His eyes glossed over in blood, the skin over it blistering and blinding. Forced to relive his hands shaking and trying to staunch the blood at his chest. His ears forced to hear again and again the rattling breath pull out from Ed's lungs mingle with the gunfire. Thomas couldn't force the smell of death and reek and blood from his nose, and couldn't close his mouth from screaming. 

 

He sat up bolt upright, throat burning from yelling and alcohol. Thomas stretched and half-fell to the tile floor. He let himself lay there a bit, letting the huge gulping breathes die down before he made any attempts to stand. Fuck, he was so fucked. Product of a war and an old worn down military cog set in motion. If Thomas hadn't used up all his tears on Ed, he'd probably cry and claw at his own skin to fight the feeling off. To shrug off the feeling of weakness, because fuck, he was crying inches from a fucking hole he used as a toilet. Who the fuck even does that? 

Hell, his dreams took him home. Not a real home, but a place he imagined in the thick of it. Down in the shit, you don't ever think of your real home and who was waiting for you there and who'd be crying if you never come back. You dreamed yourself something nice and strived to stay alive long enough to see something as nice as that, a little slice of heaven. His was shaped as a dirty apartment with the TV left on all night, a dog at the foot of the bed, and a warm dip in the bed shaped like Edward Courtenay.

Edward, who he promised up and down that they'd find a life better than this. That there had be more than people slowly starving and 'their lot' being rounded off and tagged like some kind of second class citizen by the more conservative zealots - scapegoats for the endtimes as they like to put it. Edward who was a farm boy, who dreamed of seeing the big cities in their prime, who worked hard and could shoot straight. Edward who pass half his rations to Thomas if he looked particularly starving that day. Edward, who could smile in the thick of all that shit - and who warmed Thomas more than whiskey. 

 

God, there were the tears. Thomas didn't like to remember, didn't like to push past the careful barrier that he built up in his mind against the dot in his timeline called Before. The time before America pissed every other country off and blew everyone off the map and into the sky. Before machinery dotted highways more than cars. Before the schools closed, and the children mysteriously started vanishing. Before the newly instituted draft. Before politicians went far underground shouting orders far from harm into mysterious phonelines. Before everyone lost the war. Before everyone lost everything.


	2. Chapter 2

Thomas always hated creeping out of his bunk after nights like this one. He felt... vulnerable. Like someone ran a scalpel straight through the center of him and brought out the intimate parts of him into the open where they should never, ever be. Where anyone could just stick their hands in, and if they weren't gentle enough they might break him entirely. 

He tried to walk as quietly as possible through the hall and into the control room. Everything sounded entirely too loud. His bare-feet seemed to make footfalls that echoed over the din of the engine, the angry roiling of his stomach felt louder than the cargo rattling about underneath the floor. Thomas felt entirely too large and confined for his body, and it had nothing to do with the whiskey. 

Thomas pretended Jimmy wasn't in the cockpit. It was easy enough, the unit preferred to wander the corridors and check the cargo instead of being anywhere Thomas could lay eyes on him. Today, however, he was infuriatingly sitting Thomas's chair staring fixedly forward. 

"Budge up would yah?" He asked Jimmy, nudging the chair with a foot. He was all for being polite to your employees, but after the night he had all he wanted was his chair. 

The unit tightened his grip on the dusty leather armrests. "No can do, sir." Jimmy sounded nothing like when he was reporting in his data and cataloging their scrap total for the day. This voice was tired. Not the sort of tired where you toss in your sleep at night, but the soul weary ache of watching everything fall to pieces. "At the moment I am recharging, so I am trapped in this chair for the next hour." 

 

Thomas hadn't worked with Jimmy for long, certainly not long enough to see him in a state of recharge. If he hadn't had such a pounding in his head, he might have noticed it instead of embarrassing the both of them. Jimmy had himself pressed back into the chair, his head thrown back with his fringe of blonde hair haloing his face. His eyes were closed and almost every metal muscle seemed to be jumping. He wasn't quite all there at the moment. He was more with the ship than tethered down into his body. 

Thomas had it explained to him once by in a man in a labcoat using words that Thomas didn't quite understand. It was somewhere between having his head shaved and his spirit broken. There was something about leaving the body to rest and have the neural passages repaired. The units were created as tools of war, to be perfect pilots. It was convenient to not think of them as feeling if you might have to shoot a few. 

 

The lingering expression on Jimmy's face was anything but unfeeling. In fact, it looked like he was almost pained. The nails were digging into the fabric, the entire body seemed to be bracing for something.  
"Right, sorry. Anything you need?" Thomas seemed determined to make up for his lack of tact. He pressed his fingers to the corner of his eyes, god could he be any more of an idiot? 

 

"Distract me from this bullshit?" It was more of a question than anything else and it made Thomas pause a moment. Those five words were more than Jimmy ever spoke to him aside from the general work related phrases that they traded before going their separate ways. "It's almost done anyway," Jimmy added more quietly, just in case Thomas needed convincing. 

 

To the best of Thomas's knowledge he had been working with him for the past three months. Had it really been that long? Thomas hadn't gone out looking for a unit to work alongside of, all he was looking for was a stiff drink and something that wasn't freezedried to put in his belly. Beryl's was about the only place for the next ten hours were you could do so. It served as nothing more than a trading hub, selling whatever scraps someone else might find useful in exchange for more longterm supplies. 

Thomas got a bottle of half-rank wine before he found Jimmy. You could never know how people were going to react to units. Most of them as the faces behind the guns during the war, and generally weren't received well. He watched a group of angry youth rip one apart not even days prior - pulling the limbs off, seeing ' if the metal man would bleed'. Like a coward he had turned around before he saw the silverblue ichor hit the sand, useless again at staunching someone's blood. 

 

Still... Jimmy didn't exactly to stick out too much. He chatted animatedly to a few girls peddling the end of some family mementos, and one of them was honest to god blushing. Still, Thomas followed him, at first just to keep an eye on the unit. Thomas still had the residual fear like any person looking at an enemy dead on in the face. He reasoned with himself that a lot of people had fought on the wrong side of the war, and it wasn't exactly like someone chose to get themselves dumped into those robotic bodies. America always stomped their foot and insisted they did it to people who had no other choice.

He watched Jimmy weave in and out of the crowds - he bought nothing and spoke almost to everyone. His easy grin warmed a few battletired survivors and the more hardened spoke a word before he'd set off with a nod.

 

"I know you're following me, " The unit had mouthed at him after a while. 

"You know why," Thomas wanted to sneer - instead it came out hushed; afraid. 

He knew about hiding who you were. Hell, his whole life was hiding - from his family, from church, from the military. Somewhere in his own arm a chip ached when it was cold outside, given to him specifically for being different. Thomas wanted to judge the unit, but found he couldn't. 

 

They weren't alone. A few stalls stood bent out of ancient streetsigns, the peddlers were quiet and looking over at them. Thomas didn't have to look over to know that some were reaching at their waists for something deadly. "You know why I was looking for you," Thomas said a bit too loudly and cheerful, "You look perfectly suited to help me navigate." It wasn't his best acting, but it was enough to have hands back where he could see them. 

 

"You know you never told me why you stuck around," Thomas articulated as he sat himself down on the dirty floor by Jimmy. "I usually scare everyone who comes aboard by the first stop." 

"No offense, really, but its because you have a way to get around." Jimmy's eyes were still squeezed shut, reminiscent to someone fighting off the bedspins. "I hate being stuck somewhere." 

"Women always love a man with a car." 

He watched Jimmy slowly scoff and roll his eyes slowly and deliberately, the byproduct of having your mind doing two very different things at once. "If I didn't feel like what the fucking cat drug in, I'd hit you." Somehow, Thomas could tell he was joking. " But really," Jimmy's voice suddenly sharpened. "Where the hell am I gonna go? I'm supposed to be blowing shit up - like I wanted to, to begin with." Jimmy sat himself up a bit straighter, a little more in control as the charge was winding down. "I'm some kind of freak, really." He shook his head sadly. "And it hurts, not just in the boohoo kind of way." 

"Hurts?" Thomas couldn't help but to ask. Thomas chewed thoughtfully on the inside of his lip. For all his training in combat and field knowledge when it came to the type of machinery before him, he was still surprised. Units weren't supposed to be able to feel, but with all the lies the government told them it was probably the least surprising. It was better to not think what you had to dispatch could feel when you were told to go blow them up. 

Jimmy could feel every bit of solar energy that his body was stealing from the ship's solar panels. He was never much into drugs. Before, but it felt like something out of a DARE pamphlet's list of side effects. After-school programs never really prepare you for what to do if your mind is forcibly digitized to become a byproduct of a useless war. He couldn't see straight or feel the difference between the chair, his clothes, and his body - and if he had to guess he was probably floating somewhere far above his body. Wasn't the feeling of being out of body some kind of drug reaction? He couldn't remember that far back into his schooling, all he could remember was the pretty redhead he sat next to during the assembly. 

 

Somewhere he felt a warm weight on his shoulder - pulling him back down like an anchor, one with bad taste in jokes at that. It was weird to have Thomas here, with his fingers curled around his shoulder, but he was glad for it. Jimmy disengaged himself fully now from the solar panel with no more than a flick of thoughts. That was quite enough of this recharge thing for now. 

 

"Thanks," Jimmy offered to Thomas, and patted Thomas's hand awkwardly before he moved it from his shoulder. "I ...just thanks, okay?" 

 

" 'Should be thanking you for keeping me awake, would' a woke choking on my own vomit," He wrinkled his nose. That was one 'highlight' from last week that he had no desire to repeat. 

 

"Or screaming." 

Shit. Jimmy didn't mean to let that slip out quite like that. His brain was still a bit rattled from the charge, and the brain to tongue filter wasn't something that Jimmy liked to use to begin with. If he was capable he would have blushed out of sheer horror. The look on Thomas's face made him sure there was no taking it back. 

"I 'spec that I'd enjoy it depending on the reason," the words may have been funny if Thomas's didn't look as cold as the void they were careening through. He jerked his head in a nod as he walked past. "I'll just get back to that then." 

 

Good job. A plus. Another gold star on Jimmy Kent's fuck up report card. Jimmy groaned and leaned forward against the glass ship console. There was really no apologizing after something like that. The aeronaugt didn't owe him a thing, in fact, he felt he quite owed Thomas. He didn't have to really give Jimmy a job. The bit of company wasn't as bad as it could be to boot. 

 

It's not like he wanted to hear Thomas screaming at the top of his lungs. It was quite embarrassing for him. What does one even do in that situation? He couldn't waltz in and see if Thomas wanted to talk about it. It'd be easier to ask the aeronaut to braid his hair while they trade gossip. The ship was quite small, and if he was wandering when Thomas was yelling he'd hover a bit awkwardly at the door until it stopped. If there was some sort of emergency he needed to be there - right? 

 

 

They were almost at the HUB. It was going to be an easy dump and run job, just dropping off some of the metal they promised someone and get paid in something else worth trading. They were a few hours somewhere south of their destination and the solar thermals promised good sailing. The more glowed even in their deep path full of dark and secret stars. No one was at the helm to greet it. 

 

Thomas was down on Earth again. Stretched out in a white and comfortable bed in flannel sheets softened by years of washing and littered with gold dog hair. God it was so sweet and comfortable to just be lying flat on something so deliciously soft. Somewhere off in his home he heard the dog scratching at the door and the kettle nearing a boil, all so perfectly imperfect. He heaved himself to the side of the bed rubbing sleep from his eyes. He stretched his sleepy, warm muscles and threw a shirt over top his boxers. The plush carpet was soft under his toes, the heater kicked on and blanketed him in warmth as he walked past. He could heard Edward murmuring to the dog to just wait until Thomas got up, and to knock it off. 

 

He grinned to himself and sleepily trudged out to greet them. He could see Edward leaning over the table before turning to Thomas. His eyes unblinking and sightless, as he blinked more blood seemed to flow down his face like tears. Even in his nightmare, Thomas knew where this was going, and braced himself for gunfire that didn't get a chance to bellow.

 

"You have to wake up!" 

 

The voice was too loud and too close to be from anyone near him. The closest person to Thomas was the cold Courtenay on the ground and there were no more words to come from him ever. No more kisses behind the tanks and hitting him on the ass with the butt of his gun. No more talks of where the would get themselves. No more -

"Thomas!" 

 

Thomas felt his world going black, whoever it was they'd have to save he was on the field alone he couldn't see -  
The only thing Thomas was aware of was the hard ground and a set of hands on his shoulders. There was something solid pressing around him that he couldn't help but claw at it to see it would disappear on him. Was it real? Was he really here in the dark on the floor? Is this where home was? 

"Come here then," was Jimmy's soft mutter. He hadn't quite planned on this when he decided to see if there was anything he could do for Thomas. To be perfectly and completely honest, if the light was on, there was no chance in hell he'd this close to Thomas. In the dark, he could save themselves a bit of embarrassment. 

Thomas took like a moth to flame when we was a bit of room beside Jimmy. The pit of his stomach kept somersaulting like bombs were still being rained from the sky - that shrapnel was still whistling-

Wait. There was no shrapnel here. The face that Thomas had his fingers on was smooth, there was no blood and jagged bits of metal sticking out. Thomas leaned in a bit closer, to try and squint at him in the dark - all he could make out was a smooth silhouette and a bit of the unit's blonde fringe. That certainly was not Edward.  
Not knowing exactly if you're awake or not is always horrifying. This was not Thomas's usual wake up of falling out of bed and struggling to get up onto his feet. This couldn't be real, but here he was half seated on Jimmy's lap with his arm slung around Thomas's waist like he helped ease him to the floor so he wouldn't have hurt himself. He pressed his nails into his palms, it hurt, so here he really was. Jimmy's mouth was close to his ear, whispering nonsensical things about it being okay, when it most certainly was not. 

Jimmy was quite relieved when Thomas cleared throat and started to stand. Jimmy wordlessly stood and neatly folded the blanket back onto the hammock. He would have been mortified over what just transpired if he wasn't thinking of it as repaying Thomas's favor from before. Maybe if he kept telling himself that, he might really start to believe he was just in fact returning a favor. 

Thomas didn't know what to say for a moment. He fumbled with the pullstring and kick the only light to life in the room. He blinked rapidly over the sink, god he had been crying too. There was a suspiciously dark, shiny smear on Jimmy's shirt that looked like snot. Fuck, could this literally get anymore humiliating? 

"There was some shit down there-" He began to explain. 

Thomas really didn't want to go into it, ever, and certainly not with someone who just held him like a child; but he felt he owed Jimmy some sort of explanation after putting him through all of that.

"Yeah, me too." Jimmy cut him off and banged a fist on his own forehead. "You don't come out looking like this if some shit didn't happen."  
Thomas let out a long, shuddering sigh. God he felt like an ass. A weak, miserable, stupid ass who just clung to goddamn Jimmy and cried all over his shirt like a child. To make matters worse, in the half light he hadn't slept with his shirt on. He felt painfully hideous and hairy next to the science-sculpted man. All he wanted was to crawl into bed and never come back out. 

"Just - thanks," sighed Thomas, looking at a spot of peeling paint on the wall so he didn't have to look at Jimmy.

 

" Don't worry about."


End file.
